Sunday, January 13:
"A son has arrived" R. remembers his happiness when Vreneli spoke these words to him! Yesterday evening, thinking about various dates in his life, R. felt he had made a mistake in his biography, and that it was only the stillness of the Asyl garden which fell in his memory like Good Friday; it had not, in fact, been Good Friday.
In the evening R. says he will have to rewrite everything he wrote during the morning. He was looking for a certain key, and mechanical modulation is something he finds impossible! "I'm a fine musician," he says with a laugh, adding that it is only when he is working without reflection that he finds what he wants if he starts to consider how to transpose a theme into another key, he gets confused! He sings us Titurel and the beginning of Amfortas. Impossible after that to pick up something like the history of the Arabs! We gradually drift into conversation. A nice letter has arrived from the King, and it is read aloud. Herr v. W. tells us of all sorts of good things he has experienced in connection with the Society of Patrons; the Academic Society in Vienna is behaving very well again and has sent 200 florins. A Herr Kirschner, who prepares statistics for all the theater periodicals, writes declaring his utter devotion to Bayreuth! A "Juge" ["judge"] wishes the Blatter to be sent to him. All of them touching signs!
Herr Hill writes about Die Walküre in Schwerin; R., however, is ignoring this production entirely, and he deposits unopened on Hans Wolzogen's desk a letter in which the latter's father is presumably offering a royalty payment. The conductor Schmitt has written to me, but R. asks me not to reply.